Thursday, January 08, 2009

Here's an op-ed I co-authored about the coming digital TV switchover. It is shaping up to be a real disaster. Thankfully, people seem to be waking up to this fact:

America's DTV Transition Beset with Problems

By Steve Macek and Mitchell Szczepanczyk

On February 17, 2009, all full-power analog television broadcasts in theUnited States will cease and existing TV stations will beginbroadcasting exclusively in a digital format. The switch to digitaltelevision (DTV) will free up frequencies for emergency uses and allowbroadcasters to provide more programming for their viewers through"multicasting."

As a practical matter, people will need to subscribe to a cable orsatellite television service, use a digital-ready TV set, or hook up adigital converter box to an analog TV set, in order to continue watchingbroadcast television.

Unfortunately, the number of people who stand to lose their access to TVprogramming in the coming DTV transition is considerable. Roughly 10 to15 percent of all TV households (about 30 to 40 million people) stillrely on over-the-air television, most of whom are senior citizens, poor,or non-English speakers. In a city like Chicago, with high poverty ratesand a large immigrant population, some 20 percent of residents still useantenna-only TV and an estimated 230,000 households are completelyunready for the conversion.

The federal government has launched a coupon program that allows eachhousehold to claim up to two $40 coupons to help offset the cost ofdigital converter boxes for those that can't afford them otherwise. Butthe coupons expire 90 days after issuance, and half of the more than 25million people who have requested them have seen their coupons expire.

What's more, surveys show more than three-quarters of those who areinterested in getting converter boxes are not aware of the couponprogram.

Preliminary testing of digital-only TV broadcasting in the US has beenall but non-existent. The sole switchover test, enacted in September inWilmington, NC, amounts to a false positive, since 92 percent of theviewers impacted by the test already subscribe to cable. Across thecountry, there have been sporadic tests -- perhaps a minute or a fewminutes at a time at various times and in various locales, but nothingsystematic.

Outreach about the DTV conversion has been haphazard at best. For themost part, the FCC is counting on public service announcements (PSAs)voluntarily aired by broadcasters to inform viewers about the switch.

But only 13 percent of PSAs air during the most-watched hours ofprimetime, and PSAs make up only one half of 1 percent of all TVairtime.

In recent months, the FCC has partnered with senior centers andcommunity groups to stage a series of "town hall" meetings about the DTVtransition in an effort to educate some of the most vulnerablepopulations. But scheduling of these town hall gatherings has been adhoc and in many cities the meetings have been poorly attended.

The distribution of set-top converter boxes has also been fraught withserious problems. Research has shown that the sort of stores that carryconverter boxes are typically located far from the low-incomeneighborhoods which need them most. And many retailers have been caughtflat-footed -- not knowing about the transition and sometimes providingincorrect information about the conversion or the coupon program.

Amid widespread confusion about the DTV conversion, there has been noshortage of unscrupulous retailers taking advantage. Both fly-by-nightscam businesses and major satellite and cable TV providers have beenpushing unwitting TV viewers to buy equipment they don't need atinflated prices. Worse still, earlier this year, the FCC fined severallarge big box retailers a combined $3.9 million for failing to correctlylabel analog-only TV sets that will be rendered useless come February17.

Just last week, government officials overseeing the transition toldCongress they may need an extra $330 million to keep up with the demandfor converter box coupons. They also admitted that there might not beenough converter boxes available to fill anticipated needs -- and thatthe shortfall could be as high as 2.5 million boxes.

The saddest thing about this entire situation is that America'stransition to DTV could've been handled much differently. The UK iscurrently in the midst of its own switch to digital television. Butunlike here in the U.S., the British conversion is being rolled outgradually over the course of four years, converting region-by-region,practically neighborhood by neighborhood. What's more, the money the UKhas spent on outreach and infrastructure, per capita, puts Americanefforts to shame. The British DTV conversion has had problems of itsown, but the problems have been far smaller in scale and easier toaddress. Americans who watch TV and the regulators who shape ourcommunications policies would be wise to take notice.

------------------------------------------------------------------------Macek is an associate professor of speech communication at North CentralCollege and Szczepanczyk is an organizer with Chicago Media Action and afrequent contributor to assorted Chicago-area independent media effortsin print, web, radio and television.------------------------------------------------------------------------Copyright (C) 2008 by the American Forum. 1/09